March 03, 2003
A New Pidgin

Pidgin as in language, not bird. this Reuters article detailing how a 13 year-old girl "shocked" her teacher by submitting an essay in a variant of "l33t"-speak was amusing on a number of levels:

  • A teacher who thinks alphanumeric characters in a funny arrangement equal "heiroglyphics".
  • A 13 year-old wankette who thought it would be cute to get an F for a unique reason. Hint: it's still an F, dumbass.
  • A press monkey who thought this was all so very interesting it was worth turning into a national news article.

Several years ago I watch my sister-in-law, who at the time was about this kid's age, have probably an hour's conversation using just this sort of shorthand. It was fascinating to me because I was watching someone use a completely new dialect of English, one meant exclusively to be printed and never spoken out loud.

As far as I know (AFAIK!), she still types this way to at least some of her friends.

Posted by scott at March 03, 2003 01:45 PM
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just like the priests who grumbled and muttered about when the bible was translated into different languages (besides Latin), a lot of people are grumbling about this new 1337-speak. I know a few people who can write entire paragraphs in 1337...I myself stay away from it, because when letters become numbers what will we count with? but it is neat to see the internet itself spawn a new "language".

L, z, E, H, S (1, 2, 3, 4, 5)

Posted by: Pam on March 3, 2003 02:02 PM

Scary, ain't it? I mean, it's one thing to have the language used on the Interwebnet....but it's another to have it show up in school.

Yep. An F is an F.....in any language

Posted by: Da Goddess on March 3, 2003 02:40 PM
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